RIAA Whines To Congress That It Doesn't Like Google's Search Results

from the also,-it-doesn't-play-nice-in-the-sandbox dept

We already noted that the first "punch" of the legacy entertainment industry's new attacks on Google was a silly and self-contradictory study from the MPAA blaming Google for leading susceptible people straight to infringing content. Of course, the details of the study didn't really support the inferences the MPAA is throwing out there, but, you know, that's the MPAA. The second "punch" also is pretty weak, and comes in the form of RIAA boss Cary Sherman testifying before the House Judiciary Committee's IP subcommittee. The hearing is supposed to be about "voluntary agreements," and much of Sherman's piece talks up various "voluntary" (and I use the term loosely, since nearly all were "coordinated" by the White House, and many came with the implied threat of legislation if an agreement wasn't made) agreements like the "six strikes" agreement, which studies have shown is unlikely to help the legacy entertainment industry players.

But then he turns to the "what's missing?" section, and front and center is... Google.

If ISPs can be considered the gateway by users to rogue sites online, search engines may be considered the roadmaps or, more directly, the turn-by-turn directions and door-to-door service to these sites. There can be no doubt that search engines play a considerable role in leading users to illicit services and can be a key part of addressing infringing activity online.

Actually, there can be tremendous doubt. Because as we've shown (and the MPAA's own study confirms), search engines are very rarely used to find infringing materials. Furthermore, there has yet to be any evidence that search engine blocking actually helps "address infringing activity online." In fact, as with the MPAA report, the RIAA first claims that changing search results can help, but on the very next page admits that Google did change its search results, and it didn't help. The RIAA, of course, relies on its own "report card" for Google, which has already been shown to be laughably flawed.

The problem is a basic one. The RIAA and MPAA would like sites they like to be listed higher in Google's search. Most companies that want that learn how to optimize their sites for search. It's called Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Only the legacy entertainment industry would think that, rather than doing what every other website does, they get to go to Google (and Congress) and demand that Google change its algorithm to pump up their preferred sites.

The RIAA also has an astoundingly dangerous idea for how to "fix" Google:

We believe it would be useful to see voluntary initiatives by search engines that take into account whether or not a site is authorized to provide the content at issue in determining search result rankings for searches to consume that content. This could take into account not only the absolute number of copyright removal requests sent about a site to trigger demotion of that site, but also whether the site is authorized to provide the content to trigger a higher search rank for that site.

This idea clearly comes from people who don't even have the slightest clue how search works, or what the unintended consequences of such a change would be. Let's take a basic example. If I do a basic search on the title of a movie, it doesn't necessarily mean I want to watch the movie online right away (either via authorized or unauthorized means). I might just want to know who acted in it, when it was released or whether it had good reviews. But, under the RIAA's proposed "solution," Google should demote all the perfectly legitimate websites that provide that kind of information, and instead push sites that have licensed the movies to the top. That's not going to help. It's going to piss off information seekers.

Furthermore, this doesn't take into account how things change, and how sites/technologies that are initially attacked by the industry later turn out to be important. We've talked plenty of times about the MPAA's well covered attacks on the "Boston strangler to the movie industry" that was the VCR. Of course, it was just four years after Jack Valenti made those comments that Hollywood was making more money from home video than from the box office. So, along comes the next VCR... and the RIAA and MPAA get to whine about how it's "not authorized" and pushes down the search results. Suddenly this tool that could be a tremendous boon to the industry can't get the attention necessary to grow and succeed. It's not far fetched. Viacom is still suing YouTube, even as basically the entire legacy entertainment industry relies on YouTube as a tremendous marketing and distribution tool. Imagine if the RIAA's plan was in place in YouTube's early days?

Google has announced that it intends to develop and deploy technology to eradicate links to child pornography images from the web. Certainly similar technology can be used to remove links to other illegal content.

The legacy players have trotted out this line for years, and it's no less ridiculous than it's been every time in the past. There is no "fair use" for child porn. There is fair use for copyright-covered content, and the ability to build up tools (like YouTube) that take advantage of fair use is shown to have a tremendous impact on creating useful and innovative new tools and services for the industry and the public alike. The RIAA's belief that Google can magically stamp out infringement shows a fundamental misunderstanding about how copyright works -- or (more likely) a general condescending attitude towards fair use.

Also, Google has tools in its Chrome browser to warn users if they are going to sites that may be malicious. Shouldn’t that technology be used to warn users of rogue sites?

Except there's a major difference. People don't want to go to malicious sites. Google is doing its users a favor there. When users want to go to access unauthorized content, putting up a warning page goes against their wishes and pisses off users. I recognize that the RIAA has spent decades believing that pissing off users is a viable strategy, but that might also be why they've shrunk so much, while companies that respect their users have grown.

Or better yet, can Google use similar technology to highlight or identify sites that are authorized? Imagine if links to content on legitimate sites were labeled – directly in the search result –with a certification mark indicating that the site is licensed and actually pays royalties to creators. That educational message could have a profound and positive impact on user behavior.

Again, not the problems above concerning perfectly legitimate search results that are not about getting access to the actual content. They would get punished under such a system. Furthermore, this assumes that the problem is "education." That people just don't know where to go to get authorized content. There's little indicating this is true.

Finally, beyond the issue of annoying clutter on Google's interface at the behest of a single industry, you have to wonder where heading down that path lies. If the record labels and movie studios get it, what about luxury brands? I'm sure Louis Vuitton would love to be able to get a special mark on search results it likes. Or, how about the Associated Press? Perhaps it wants a special mark on news publications it "approves." Suddenly lots of other legitimate sites are left out in the cold.

Either way, we've been running around seeing the RIAA and MPAA do the same damn thing for a decade and a half now. It's always about blaming others for their own failures to give consumers what they want. Yet, when they finally do give consumers what they want, infringement tends to go down. Magic. Perhaps instead of continually looking around at who else they can blame for their own failings, they should spend a bit more time trying to innovate.

Reader Comments

"with a certification mark indicating that the site is licensed and actually pays royalties to creators"

That would only work if the only people able to put this mark on their site were legit royalty payers.
It would be trivially easy in such a situation for someone to forge the mark, lead users to illegitimate content. What will the MAFIAA say then? The users should have magically distrusted the very mark that they have pushed?
Or do they mean something along along the lines of the padlock symbol for HTTPS? Well, with the recent NSA leaks, that's been to be more or less untrustworthy. I can't recall the last time the MAFIAA industry ever developed a computer technology that was actually secure and trustworthy. All I can remember is about three decades worth of DRM that has failed every single time to prevent unauthorized copying.

Re:

The proposal seems to be a whitelist where "trusted" sites are only those given to google through RIAA/collection societies/ad hoc government committee.

The main problems are:
A whitelist has to be updated and frequently.
What do you need to enter that list? How transparent is the intended process? If RIAA members procedures are anything to go by, I would say it spells monopoly abuse almost before these questions are answered!
Regardless, it is an artificial monopoly gatekeeper position that weakens competition depending on update speed and demands.
It is also extinction scale disruptive to untested business models unless they hand over some of their startup funding to get on the list...

Such a list would also just be begging to be abused in some unintended way, but I do not see how that is RIAAs problem since they are the ones standing to get all the benefits and none of the responsibilities!

Re: Re:

And anyone who wants to help users find unauthorized content can just create a browser plugin that ignores the officially sanctioned results. There are already browser plugins that allow you to remove websites from your personal google search results. It's not difficult for people who are looking for unauthorized content to turn a whitelist into a blacklist, so such a designation would actually make it easier to separate out the authorized sites if the list was actually well maintained.

Re:

'...indicating that the site is licensed and actually pays royalties to creators'

Bad choice of wording on their part, as if that's what it takes to get the 'certification of approval', then the *AA's are going to be out of luck, given their aversion to actually paying the artists.

I agree though, such a 'seal' would be quite handy in helping those of us that do our best to never send them a cent to avoid them, allowing us to instead throw our money at actual creators, and those people/companies who don't hold their customers in such contempt.

The bright part of all this idiocy is that I've been pushed towards indie and free stuff. The not-so-bright part is that now I spend at least 5 times what I used to spend specially on games and music. And not a dime goes to the MAFIAA. Okay, part will start going, I surrendered to Netflix =//

Re:

but you see The RIAA will be in charge of generating the white list for music. So in the future when you search for your favorite indie band's music, instead you'll be offered RIAA approved music instead. Your indie bands website will show up around page 50 of the results.

Does the RIAA or the MPAA truly never understand how search engines work. When I go on Google and search for "Def Leppard torrent", it's going to find torrent sites that have "Def Leppard music for downloads. It's not going to redirect me to iTunes, Amazon or Best Buy because they do not offer torrents. lols

Re: Re:

This is just another approach to countering net neutrality. Instead of ISPs wanting to be able to charge more for certain content being sped up, the MAFIAA are trying to get better, privileged search results for free. It's still a violation of the crowdsourced concept of a search engine.

And if Google concedes to this or is forced to concede to this, not only will be it be a big anti-free market and anti-net neutrality move, it will also just lead people to foreign owned search engines that can't be bullied into this kind of favoritism.

Re:

From what I've seen, in order to get the result they bitch about, you have to form your search very carefully so that you've making it abundantly clear that you're looking for a free download. You can see this from most of the articles about such things, they're always specifically searching for free downloads or free torrents, not merely the title. In other words, Google are merely providing exactly what they're being asked for...

Just one of the many ways the **AAs try to misdirect those not technically clued up enough to notice the lies themselves.

The child porn analogy

The article says "There is no "fair use" for child porn", but really that's just a tiny part of it. The biggest difference is that it doesn't matter which site is offering the child porn, or whether they want you to pay for it - it's *always* illegal. The only grey area is "is it actually child porn ?". That's a huge difference from "this site is allowed to offer that video for free, that one is allowed to charge for the same thing, that third one is offering it for free without authorisation, and the fourth is charging, but is also unauthorised". That's before you get into any "fair use" argument whereby in some cases it may be both unauthorised and legal.

I guess it might not be a bad thing if we allowed Google to assume that all Miley Cyrus videos were illegal...

Re: The child porn analogy

That's an excellent point, but I think what RIAA wants is for Google to remove all copies of a copyrighted work from the index unless specifically approved by the copyright holder. They want something like Google's ContentID system, but at the search engine level. It's also why I think Google's child pornography database is a bad idea: Once a system is in place to prevent access to certain content, it is easily repurposed into blocking other content. We've already seen this happen with government-mandated filtering, and it may very well happen again with Google's child pornography database, perhaps under legal pressure.

I still think Google should try an experiment, and for one day/week whatever, any search for an RIAA or MPAA search term should come up empty, with a note explaining what they are doing. Then see how that affects everyone, torrent and legal alike.

Also, Google has tools in its Chrome browser to warn users if they are going to sites that may be malicious. Shouldn’t that technology be used to warn users of rogue sites?

Except there's a major difference. People don't want to go to malicious sites. Google is doing its users a favor there. When users want to go to access unauthorized content, putting up a warning page goes against their wishes and pisses off users.

And then the users would just disable that "technology". The antimalware on Chrome and Firefox can be disabled.

Then they will ask Google to remove the option to disable it. That might be possible for Chrome, but then the users would just migrate to Firefox or Chromium. Removing the option to disable it on these browsers would just mean people would compile them from the source code, after ripping out the code which does the antimalware checking.

and as usual, Congress will be falling over itself to do what is wanted, signing some other law into being that fucks the people even more (the very opposite of what Congress is supposed to do), while counting the envelope full of $100 bills they all happened to find, on their individual chairs!! no thought for anything else! no thought for the billions of $ that have gone into government coffers because of all the tings the internet and its users have provided. no thought for the jobs that have been created, unlike the make believe losses the entertainment industries say have been lost (while counting down to the person who made sandwiches for the heads of industries), no thought for the technological advances, including the speed and reliability of the internet, making it so much better for every business world wide! and dont forget how things have been much easier and much more reliable for the NSA to be able to conduct their illegal surveillance tactics !! the things mentioned are all 'must haves'. a movie and/or a music disk is not, never has been and never will be 'must have' items. they are for entertainment only, not for keeping a country going, keeping it competitive in world markets! if there was one wish to make the world easier, it would be to disband and outlaw all the entertainment industries! rather than aid an economy, certainly one that is still in depression, these industries do not! they have for decades been responsible for holding back inventions, innovations, businesses and forward thinking people! and governments cant do enough to help them fuck up the rest of the world, keeping it stuck in the 'Dark Ages' because they refuse to adapt and compete with other markets, like everyone else is not only expected to do, but are forced to do!

RIAA missing so many opportunities...

The RIAA is missing so many opportunities to improve their business, but it's not missing any to make themselves look like idiots.

Here's my interpretation of the RIAA's claim:
RIAA: "There's a whorehouse on somewhere Google Ave. Well there might be. OK, there's that one lady who dresses funny sometimes. Anyway, we're going to need the entire street dug up, and put up signs directing people looking for a whorehouse to my 'House of Lotion' instead."

Search TPB

The thing that strikes me and the RIAA/MPAA's attitude toward search engines is their outstanding lack of aim. When I want to see what is available, I don't search Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, I search The Pirate Bay. Somehow I don't think those folks will be including any kind of certification mark any time soon...though maybe, if some things were different.

I don't get why they don't just make their own search engine(s) with these features. Apparently it's super easy and obvious to do, right? And it'll be a better experience for the customers, duh, and they'll run Google out of town in no time!

where on the map was the entertainment industries road that, if followed, took everything of the modern technological world straight to the shit pile? that is where the entertainment industries want every other internet business to go, so it can then be in total control of the internet, the very thing it wants to destroy unless it can force all other users off it! it wants to decide what is available on the internet, what price and from where it can be obtained. if those industries say 'NO', they still think everyone is going to run back to the shops. it also thinks that if Google and other search engines were forced to remove results of searches, only everything else except movies, music, games etc will be found. they will do anything, at any cost (as long as it isn't to them!) to screw up this invention! and stupid politicians help as much, as quick as possible, ignoring how the internet has given more jobs and more revenue into a country's coffers than any other invention. certainly thousands of times more than the entertainment industries could ever imagine giving!!

Do you look at a roadmap to get to your house, Mike?

Presumably not, as you've learned the way. SO, since "Because as we've shown (and the MPAA's own study confirms), search engines are very rarely used to find infringing materials." seems your key assertion, I'll just debunk it: AS stated in testimony, though I guess not explicit enough if you choose to be stoopid, the difficult part is FIRST TIME finding the gateways and roadmaps. Obviously Google is the CRUCIAL point.Biggest lie in least words: "a few pirates"!

Re: Do you look at a roadmap to get to your house, Mike?

"the difficult part is FIRST TIME finding the gateways and roadmaps. Obviously Google is the CRUCIAL point."

Yeah, because in your deluded little world, Google is the only means of finding anything online and word-of-mouth or news reports that mention the name The Pirate Bay or Bing or Yahoo! or Usenet or MIRC or Twitter or RSS feeds or smoke signals or telegrams or cave drawings are all completely incapable of being the medium of communication through which someone can find out about a website.

For being so anti-Google, you seem to think they're the only search engine or communication medium on the internet.

No, Mike, it's about people taking what doesn't belong to them:

NOT "It's always about [MPAA & RIAA] blaming others for their own failures to give consumers what they want." Where arrogance meets ignorance to conspire what they'll do with someone else's $100 million movie.

Re: No, Mike, it's about people taking what doesn't belong to them:

people taking what doesn't belong to them is irrelevent.

Assigning the responsibility of enforcing the law to Google is a bad move. They aren't cops.

This trend of forcing others to carry the burden of companies who want to deny reality is flushing all our efficiency down the crapper. We are going to get demolished by anyone who doesn't set up restrictions on progress every time Mickey Mouse snaps his fingers. Start moving back towards reality or inevitably crumble.

Re: Re: No, Mike, it's about people taking what doesn't belong to them:

@ "crade" : "people taking what doesn't belong to them is irrelevent." -- There you go, folks (the few reasonable who wander into this pirate haven): "crade" doesn't care about theft.If Mike supports copyright, why are the pirates here? They take him same as I do: PRO-PIRACY!

The RIAA and MPAA members do not believe in fair use. They're companies run my marketers and lawyers, not artists. Everything they use is licensed even if using it would be fair use, and they expect the rest of the world to behave the same way, regardless of what the law says.

Again it's a good thing no one knows about bookmarks. Once found you never have to go back to search for any site.

It appears to me what the real hidden push here is to be able to get free advertising and search engine placement by demanding congress do something rather than do it themselves. It costs money and they are doing their best to hide wanting to free load. Sounds like the pot calling the kettle don't it.

Lots of sites use this new fangled thing called robot.txt. Bet that works out real well on finding such on Google. /s

It would be amazing to me if they ever figure out there is more than one search engine in the world. If they were to actually get all the english language serving engines under their wing, any one with half a brain can figure out where to go to get results in a foreign country. Google might come in handy here for it's language translation. But Google would not be serving the search results.

I can tell you now, I already don't use Google and haven't for years. I simply hate advertising and datamining. While I may not be able to stop it all, I can sure put a serious dent in it by what I allow or don't. Google is one of those I don't allow the use of because of the heavy ads.

So yeah, this is really gonna help a lot. Just like putting a bandaid on someone that fell out of a plane is going to help.

If ISPs can be considered the gateway by users to rogue sites online, search engines may be considered the roadmaps or, more directly, the turn-by-turn directions and door-to-door service to these sites. There can be no doubt that search engines play a considerable role in leading users to illicit services and can be a key part of addressing infringing activity online.

I didn't find Techdirt via Google...I didn't know it exsited or how to find such an awesome site. I found Techdirt via word of mouth...

Re:

I found Techdirt the same way by word on the internet from another site no longer on line. It's been gone several years, somehow I always manage to return here without using Google. Who would have thought such was possible?

We believe it would be useful to see voluntary initiatives by search engines that take into account whether or not a site is authorized to provide the content at issue in determining search result rankings for searches to consume that content.
Already done: -site:amazon.com

"When users want to go to access unauthorized content, putting up a warning page goes against their wishes and pisses off users." -- And of course MIke doesn't want criminals pissed off!

Mike really gets his rant on when Google might be forced to make its computers do a bit of policing that's clearly in the interest of all honest people who'll pay for content, AND when he can attack MPAA and RIAA. It's difficult to believe he "supports copyright" when in EVERY case he's dead against any actual enforcement mechanisms, only blathers about how stealing is entirely the fault of content producers.Mike Masnick on Techdirt: "a bogus, laughable group that is spreading ideas that would do massive harm to the internet based on a near total ignorance of how things work."

if Chrome blocks users from going to "unauthorized" sites...people will just change browsers. There are 4 or 5 major ones now. And, after that, there is lynx, and then wget/curl, and then individuals will start to make their own. just to find the content that someone says is unauthorized.

Also, Google has tools in its Chrome browser to warn users if they are going to sites that may be malicious. Shouldn’t that technology be used to warn users of rogue sites?

Suspicious code can be detected by an algorithm. There is no way for code to decide whether a title on a file refers to content that is being offered without authorisation of the copyright holder, or even ho the copyright holder is. The RIAA agents cannot reliably identify RIAA members material.

Imagine if links to content on legitimate sites were labeled – directly in the search result –with a certification mark indicating that the site is licensed and actually pays royalties to creators.
Like the Anti-virus plugins?

It sounds like the riaa thinks that people are getting tricked into illegal downloading by search engines. Even if there are a few people hoodwinked into stealing, is all the money thrown at pointing them elsewhere really going to be worth it?

Do it the easy way

Just remove the entire term from being searchable, and see what happens.

"You searched for Iron Man 3. According to the MPAA our search results may direct you to infringing sites, and have requested we censor and alter our search results. We have opted to censor ALL the results for your search. We apologise for any inconvenience caused."

I just want to see their greedy bloated corrupt Industry finally expire.The same thought I had back in 1976 when I became a life long punkin rock n roller.
Best thing to do is to never buy a thing from them and Educate your friends and fans.
Buy & Support Non-MAFIAA ART ! Buy Local Art ! Screw the MAFIAA and double screw their sold-out Artists.

it makes no difference what anyone does, it will never be enough for the entertainment industries. what they want is to take complete control of the internet. they want to be the ones that decide what web sites can be on the net and decide what those allowed web sites are able to offer, whether it is information, services or items. the things to do that will be of greatest help to those industries, first and foremost is for Congress to FUCKING WELL WISE UP TO THE SHENANIGANS THE INDUSTRIES ARE UP TO AND THEN TELL THEM TO FUCK OFF, EVEN IF IT DOES MEAN THE MEMBERS HAVE TO GO WITHOUT THEIR 'ENCOURAGEMENTS' NORMALLY RECEIVED FOR 'SERVICES RENDERED'!! what Congress needs to remember is that, sooner or later, the shit is going to hit fan over the measures they keep authorising and bring into law in order to do what the industries (and only these industries! no other complains so much or so often to Congress about how their business is failing because of the internet in general and Google in particular') want! they are going to give the industries a law they want or permission to do something they want and the internet is going to fail. Congress never thinks about all the money that the internet has made for them in their various company roles or for the country in general. that figure is thousands of times greater than any money that would be lost if there were no entertainment industry in the USA or anywhere at all, ever again! they would do far more good if they told those industries to stop whining and grow up! to just keep believing whatever they get told is gonna seriously come back and bite them in the ass! and it will serve them right. as for this little gem of an idea, some of the former ideas have been proven since to be so dangerous, they haven't been even thought about since. the problem that Congress is going to have if they keep giving in to these industries is how are you going to talk your way out ofit when the whole thing goes tits up? when the rest of the world is still trading, businesses are still thriving, banks are still dealing and the USA is sitting there, like a ship without engines, wallowing, thumb up bum, brain in neutral, going further and firther down the crapper with each passing second! perhaps that is what we should wish to happen. at least then the country will see, the government will see, Congress will see, what absolute morons thay have been. nothing the entertainment industries convince Congress to do is for their saving. it is simply to get the total control they want. once they get it, they will screw it up anyway, just like they do everything they touch. if Congress were to look back at the changes that have been made to law to aid these industries, then see how often there are changes to laws for the same purpose, with no help actually happening, perhaps it will hit them like a wet fish, right between the eyes! they are failing, if at all, because they dont do anything to help themselves other than continuously blaming everyone else and crying to Congress to save them. even the things that have been done to date, all of which have failed, have been paid for by whatever other companies they could blame, plus the people in general because of the poorer services given by those other companies afterwards! this is a shameful situation that congress needs to sort out once and for all by getting the entertainment industries to grow up, listen to customers and provide what is asked for!!

It is going to become obvious to them at some point that the way they stop perpetual MPAA crying and tantrum-throwing about needing draconian anti-piracy laws, is to purchase one or more of the major movie studios. Once they own the studio, any executive who starts throwing tantrums about piracy is immediately fired.

Don't like Google's search results?

Hey, RIAA, Google's already provided a mechanism for fixing their search results when you don't like what shows up at the top.

It's called AdWords. You want your stuff to show up above the results people are actually searching for? You can damn well pay, like everyone else does. You guys have enough money to bribe legislators, so you clearly have enough to pay Google to show your choice of ad whenever someone searches for the names of your imaginary properties, or even The Pirate Bay since legal precedent is piling up in favor of buying your competitors' trademarks as ad keywords.

Innovate. Hrmph. You'll have better luck getting telecom to respect the tenets of the country that made them and protects them every step of the way. And that's a big fat fucking chance. Innovate. They can't do anything but bitch, ever. RIAA - where opportunity is as black as night.